Bible, Left Out of Obama’s Oath Do-Over, Not a Requirement

When Barack Obama took his oath of office a second time, he got the wording right but this time he didn’t use a Bible.

Not that there’s anything constitutionally wrong with that.

Swearing on the Bible during inaugurations “is a matter of tradition rather than law,” the Washington Post reports.

Theodore Roosevelt did not use a Bible when he took the oath in 1901, the story says. And Lyndon Johnson used a liturgical text with a cross on the cover when he took the oath at a Dallas airport after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe told the Post that the Constitution spells out the terms of the oath of office, but it doesn’t require a religious text. "That tradition just was begun by George Washington and has been pursued ever since, but there's nothing in the Constitution that says anything about a Bible," he said.